When the late-night television comedians joke about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the two government-sponsored housing finance agencies that almost went belly-up during the housing crisis -- you know they have reached the public consciousness.

But there are two other federal housing programs hardly anyone knows about. One is Farmer Mac, a government-sponsored enterprise similar to Fannie and Freddie; the other is from the Department of Agriculture.

Both are aimed at rural homebuyers, but don't let that word fool you: "Rural" may be much closer than you think.

Among Farmer Mac's programs is one that targets buyers who want to move to the country and do a bit of farming, either full-scale or on the side. If you qualify, you are eligible for mortgages of up to $12 million (or $30 million on high-value properties of less than 1,000 acres).

There are no minimum or maximum acreage requirements. But if the property is less than five acres -- not a lot of ground in some suburban markets -- a minimum of $5,000 in annual gross sales of agriculture products must be documented. There is no such requirement for properties larger than five acres.

Known more formally as the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, Farmer Mac was created by Congress in 1988 to build a secondary market for agriculture real estate and rural housing mortgages, thereby increasing the availability of long-term credit for ranchers, farmers and rural homebuyers.

It doesn't make loans directly to borrowers. Rather, it purchases loans made by local lenders. And among the products it buys are part-time farm/residential mortgages made to so-called "hobby" farmers.

Eligible properties must be owner-occupied, single-family detached residences or second homes with enough acreage to support agricultural production. There are no geographic restrictions, but the property can't be just a house on a large lot, or off in the woods somewhere.

A variety of loans are available, including both fixed-rate and adjustable mortgages, with terms from seven to 30 years. For loans up to $5 million, the loan-to-value ratio cannot exceed 70 percent. Borrowers who want more than that will have to pony up 40 percent as a down payment.

To qualify, you must be a U.S. citizen or permanently admitted for U.S. residency.

To find a local lender that sells its mortgages to Farmer Mac, go to FarmerMac.com and fill out the pre-application form under the Borrowers tab. An employee will contact you to help you find a lender serving your area.

For borrowers who want to live in the country but don't want to be farmers, the Agriculture Department's Rural Housing Service (RHS) offers a variety of loans, grants and loan guarantees to build, buy or improve both single- and multi-family properties.

Actually, "rural" is something of a misnomer when it comes to the USDA, because eligible properties can be much closer to big-city markets than you might think. To find out if the property you are considering is eligible, go to eligibility.sc.egov.usda.gov and enter the address.

Under the RHS' Section 502 Direct Loan Program, low- and moderate-income borrowers are eligible for 100 percent mortgages with no money down. Applicants must have an adjusted income that is no greater than the low-income limit for their area, and be unable to obtain a mortgage from other sources.

Generally, houses can be no more than 1,800 square feet with a market value that does not exceed the applicable area loan amount.

The payback period for Section 502 mortgages is 33 years, though applicants with very low incomes who can't afford that extended loan term can stretch the loan out to 37 years.

Under the Guaranteed Loan Program, RHS provides a 90 percent loan note guarantee to approved lenders, to reduce the risk of extending 100 percent loans to eligible rural homebuyers and those who want to build, rehabilitate, improve or relocate a dwelling in an eligible rural area.

To find a list of approved lenders, go to rd.usda.gov/files/SFHGLDApprovedLenders.pdf.

There are limitations based on income and family size. But folks who have "moderate incomes" -- up to 115 percent of the U.S. median -- qualify. In the Chicago area, for example, the limit ranges from $87,400 for a one-person household to $115,350 for households with eight members. And in the Sarasota-North Port area on Florida's southwest coast, the ceiling ranges from $75,650 for single borrowers to $99,850 for eight-member households.

Guaranteed loans can be used for a new or existing residential property to be used as a permanent residence, occupied by the borrower. Closing costs and reasonable and customary expenses associated with the purchase may be included in the transaction.

The fact that television and radio pitchmen hawking real estate-related "get rich quick" schemes still fill the airways is not surprising. Not, at least, if you subscribe to the famous admonition about there being "a sucker born every minute."

But anyone considering handing over their hard-earned cash for classes, books and tapes that supposedly reveal the great secrets to using real estate to build instant wealth -- while exerting hardly any energy at all -- should ask themselves this:

If it is so darn easy to earn millions by following these get-rich preachers, why are they working so hard to turn you into a disciple?

The 2013 settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and financial guru Russ Dalbey should help answer that question.

Dalbey, who is now banned from the infomerical business, wasn't one of those buy-and-flip guys who dot the airwaves once Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and the other late-night TV hosts sign off for the night. Instead, he was all about buying and selling promissory notes, most backed by real estate.

But like the majority of late-night pitchmen, whether they hawk real estate, privately held mortgages or tax liens, Dalbey did not earn millions from brokering notes, as he so proudly claimed.

Rather, according to a complaint filed by the FTC and Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, most of Dalbey's "note-related income" for the past 20 years came from "marketing and selling products and services purporting to teach consumers how to find and broker promissary notes."

Dalbey's pitch, "Winning in the Cash Flow Business," featured success stories of people claiming to have earned $1.2 million in 30 days, $79,000 in a few hours and $262,216 part-time.

But over the 15 years or so he was on the air, according to David Frankel, the FTC staff attorney on the case, only 296 of the 949,000-some people who purchased Dalbey's stuff actually made money, and just 129 made more than they'd spent on the courses.

People whom Dalbey swindled paid anywhere from $40 to $160 for his "Note Network" program. But once they were reeled in, they were hounded by high-pressure telemarketers to spend thousands more on boot camps, coaching sessions and lists of potential leads.

Dalbey was fined $330 million and forever prohibited from telemarketing, selling business opportunities and producing and distributing infomercials. But he escaped jail time.

Wade Cook didn't. The former taxi driver, who made most of his money selling books and tapes purporting to teach people how to find and broker privately held mortgages, was sentenced in 2007 to more than seven years in a federal penitentiary.

But both "gurus" fared better than their fellow con-man Don Lapre, who sold, among other things, a 36-page booklet explaining how to recover a Federal Housing Administration insurance refund after paying off a mortgage. Lapre killed himself in jail in 2011, while awaiting trial for bilking more than 220,000 victims out of nearly $52 million.

Lapre was charged with 41 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

If this isn't enough to convince folks to keep a tight fist on their wallets, then they should check out the guru-rating Web page created by former real estate investor and newsletter publisher John T. Reed (johntreed.com). Reed sells a series of booklets on his site, and also offers what he says is "logical, well-researched, real-world, real estate investment advice."

That's the direct opposite of what many real estate investment "experts" have to sell.

The idea for the ratings list grew out of a 1990 article Reed wrote called "The Real Estate B.S. Artist Detection Checklist." The piece was intended to teach people how to recognize the charlatans on their own. But his readers wanted more -- his specific recommendation on every guru who has come down the pike. And there have been many.

Since 1979, he says, "there has been an endless parade of B.S. artists coming into the real estate investment advice field... It is an embarrassment to the good people in the business."

So, Reed started rating and reviewing dozens of industry authors, experts and seminar leaders -- giving readers his opinions of which ones are worth listening to. If you can't find a specific investor on the ratings page, which Reed admits he hasn't updated recently, check out his site's general guidelines for identifying a scam artist, and decide for yourself.

Sooner or later, the charlatans always meet the same fate as Dalbey and his fellow real estate robbers, says William Mencarow, another publisher-investor.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly," says Mencarow, "but eventually grind fine."

One of the most difficult things for sellers to do is come up with the right asking price for their castles -- one that will net them the most money, without the house laboring on the market for far too long.

Real estate agents are often helpful when it comes to pricing. But while many work with their clients to set the "right" number, others suggest too high a price in hopes of securing the listing, only to later tell the sellers they aimed too high.

Other agents suggest too low a price in the hopes that the place will sell on its own merits without much of a marketing effort on their part. In other words, so they can nab a quick commission.

Owners are sometimes culpable, too: Thinking their homes are the best on the market, bar none, they delude themselves into believing their places will fetch top dollar. Or, whether housing prices in their neck of the woods are rising, falling or just plain stagnant, they believe their homes are worth more than they really are.

According to a study set for publication in the Journal of Housing Economics, for example, owners tend to overvalue their homes by an average of 8 percent. Those who bought during the 2004-2006 boom years overestimate their home's value by even more: as much as 12 percent.

Whether with their agents' help or on their own, the study said, "homeowners systematically overestimate the value of their homes."

But soon, sellers will have a new Web-based pricing tool at their disposal. The program won't tell you what price to ask, but it will project with uncanny accuracy whether your home's value will be rising, falling or remain unchanged.

Currently, you can use the static and dynamic maps developed by Weiss Residential Research in Natick, Massachusetts, to chart how values have changed in your neighborhood over the last 12 months, and what they are likely to do in the next 12 months.

Soon, says founder Allan Weiss, you'll be able to do the same for your specific house.

The maps work like this: Go to weissindex.com and type in your ZIP code. (Note: Due to local disclosure laws, data is currently unavailable for 12 U.S. states.) A map of that area will pop up on the screen with a color-coded dot representing every house. A green dot means the price for that house has been rising; a red dot means its price has been falling.

Now, run the cursor over the years at the bottom of the screen and you'll see a historical perspective. If you see all green for several years and then some red, it means there's potential for a downturn. But if you see all red for several years and then some green, a possible upturn is in the offing.

These mini-indices are based on repeat sales and show changing values 12 months into the future for 100 major metropolitan areas and some 6,000 ZIP codes.

But Weiss has recently increased the database to include nearly 100 million residential properties throughout the country, making it possible to create similar indices for each of those houses. Within a few months, he promises, you'll be able to do the same for specific houses by typing in addresses.

The maps will not only show what the value of that house has been for the past few years, but also what its worth is likely to be over the next 12 months -- not a specific price, but rather a trend line.

The Weiss Residential Index is free to use, and Weiss vows it will never be used as a lead-generation tool for agents or lenders. The site will instead be subsidized through his agreements with others portals.

The name Weiss may sound familiar. He was CEO of Case Shiller Weiss, and was instrumental in bringing the popular and widely quoted Case-Shiller housing barometer to market. Case-Shiller shows how house values have changed over the previous 12 months in 20 major markets and dozens of smaller ones.

But that rear-looking index was unable to predict the 2008 housing market crash that sent values plummeting. That's when Weiss said he "knew something was wrong."

"It didn't help people recognize the crash," he said. "And it didn't show that even during the worst of the crash, some homes declined less in value than others, and some even appreciated. Nor did it show that some neighborhoods experienced downturns sooner than others."

The index he helped create was useless, says Weiss, who sold his share of the Case Shiller Weiss business in 2002. "People don't own their entire market. They own one house, and everyone needs their own index."

So he set about building a new index -- one that not only looks backward, but also forward. And over the last five years, he and his staff have developed tools that could possibly forewarn of never-before-seen market movements.

"Weiss maps show waves of value changes moving across a geographic area like a weather event," he explains. "New trends can be discovered, new sub-markets defined, compared and ranked, and better decisions made."

The maps can be helpful for buyers as well as sellers. Say, for example, you are considering two similar $400,000 houses you like equally. But one's index is rising, the other's is declining, and the forecasts show each trend is likely to continue.

So which place are you going to pick? Armed with the information from the maps, the decision is relatively simple.